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Publications

Browse publications authored by our scientists.  Publications available are: USGS-authored journal articles, series reports, book chapters, other government publications, and more. **Disclaimer: The views expressed in Non-USGS publications are those of the author and do not represent the views of the USGS, Department of the Interior, or the U.S. Government.

Filter Total Items: 4351

Restoration of the fire-grazing interaction in Artemisia filifolia shrubland of the Southern Great Plains, North America

1. Patterns of landscape heterogeneity are crucial to the maintenance of biodiversity in shrublands and grasslands, yet management practices in these ecosystems typically seek to homogenize landscapes. Furthermore, there is limited understanding of how the interaction of ecological processes, such as fire and grazing, affects patterns of heterogeneity at different spatial scales. 2. We conducted r
Authors
Stephen L. Winter, Samuel D. Fuhlendorf, Carla L. Goad, Craig A. Davis, Karen R. Hickman, David M. Leslie

Conservation Effects Assessment Project-Wetlands assessment in California's Central Valley and Upper Klamath River Basin

Executive Summary-Ecosystem Services Derived from Wetlands Reserve Program Conservation Practices in California's Central Valley and Oregon's Upper Klamath River Basin. The Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) is one of several programs implemented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Since the WRP's inception in 1990, it has resulted in the restoration of approximately 29,000 hectares in Calif

Water quality and amphibian health in the Big Bend region of the Rio Grande Basin

Male and female Rio Grande leopard frogs (Rana berlandieri) were collected in May 2005 from the main stem and tributaries of the Rio Grande in the Big Bend region of Texas. Frogs were examined for (1) incidence of testicular ovarian follicles in males; (2) thyroid epithelial cell height, a potential index of exposure to thyroid-disrupting contaminants; and (3) incidence of liver melanomacrophage a
Authors
Bibek Sharma, F. Hu, J.A. Carr, Reynaldo Patiño

Refuge habitats for fishes during seasonal drying in an intermittent stream: movement, survival and abundance of three minnow species

Drought and summer drying can be important disturbance events in many small streams leading to intermittent or isolated habitats. We examined what habitats act as refuges for fishes during summer drying, hypothesizing that pools would act as refuge habitats. We predicted that during drying fish would show directional movement into pools from riffle habitats, survival rates would be greater in pool
Authors
S.W. Hodges, Daniel D. Magoulick

Intercontinental gene flow among western arctic populations of Lesser Snow Geese

Quantifying the spatial genetic structure of highly vagile species of birds is important in predicting their degree of population demographic and genetic independence during changing environmental conditions, and in assessing their abundance and distribution. In the western Arctic, Lesser Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens caerulescens) provide an example useful for evaluating spatial population geneti
Authors
Rainy I. Shorey, Kim T. Scribner, Jeannette Kanefsky, Michael D. Samuel, Scot V. Libants

Catfish science: Status and trends in the 21st century

Catfish science, the study of the fish order Siluriformes, is a diverse and expanding field in terms of advances and breadth of topics. We compiled literature from primary fisheries journals as an index of interest and advances in catfish science to examine temporal trends in the field. The number of catfish scientific publications varied over the past century with strong peaks during 1975–1979 an
Authors
Thomas J. Kwak, Mark T. Porath, Paul H. Michaletz, Vincent H. Travnichek

Physiological effects of potassium chloride, formalin and handling stress on bonytail

We characterized the sublethal physiological changes in bonytail Gila elegans subjected to consecutive 750-mg/L potassium chloride (KCl) and 25-mg/L formalin treatments for the removal of zebra mussel Dreissena polymorpha and quagga mussel D. bugensis veligers. Plasma cortisol, glucose, and osmolality were measured over 24 h and at 14 d posthandling after exposing bonytail to KCl and one net stres
Authors
Catherine L. Sykes, Colleen A. Caldwell, William R. Gould

How landscape dynamics link individual- to population-level movement patterns: A multispecies comparison of ungulate relocation data

Aim  To demonstrate how the interrelations of individual movements form large-scale population-level movement patterns and how these patterns are associated with the underlying landscape dynamics by comparing ungulate movements across species.Locations  Arctic tundra in Alaska and Canada, temperate forests in Massachusetts, Patagonian Steppes in Argentina, Eastern Steppes in Mongolia.Methods  We u
Authors
Thomas Mueller, K.A. Olson, G. Dressler, Peter Leimgruber, Todd K. Fuller, Craig Nicholson, A.J. Novaro, M.J. Bolgeri, David W. Wattles, Stephen DeStefano, J.M. Calabrese, William F. Fagan

Pathology and failure in the design and implementation of adaptive management

The conceptual underpinnings for adaptive management are simple; there will always be inherent uncertainty and unpredictability in the dynamics and behavior of complex ecological systems as a result non-linear interactions among components and emergence, yet management decisions must still be made. The strength of adaptive management is in the recognition and confrontation of such uncertainty. Rat
Authors
Craig R. Allen, Lance H. Gunderson

Survival and harvest-related mortality of white-tailed deer in Massachusetts

We monitored 142 radiocollared adult (≥1.0 yr old) white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in 3 study areas of Massachusetts, USA, to estimate annual survival and mortality due to legal hunting. We then applied these rates to deer harvest information to estimate deer population trends over time, and compared these to trends derived solely from harvest data estimates. Estimated adult female surv
Authors
John E. Mcdonald, Stephen DeStefano, Christopher Gaughan, Michael Mayer, William A. Woytek, Sonja Christensen, Todd K. Fuller

Nutrient fluxes and the recent collapse of coastal California salmon populations

Migratory salmon move nutrients both in and out of fresh waters during the different parts of their life cycle. We used a mass-balance approach to quantify recent changes in phosphorus (P) fluxes in six coastal California, USA, watersheds that have recently experienced dramatic decreases in salmon populations. As adults, semelparous Chinook (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) and coho (Oncorhynchus kisutch
Authors
Jonathan W. Moore, Sean A. Hayes, Walter Duffy, Sean Gallagher, Cyril J. Michel, David Wright

Adaptive resource management and the value of information

The value of information is a general and broadly applicable concept that has been used for several decades to aid in making decisions in the face of uncertainty. Yet there are relatively few examples of its use in ecology and natural resources management, and almost none that are framed in terms of the future impacts of management decisions. In this paper we discuss the value of information in a
Authors
Byron K. Williams, Mitchell J. Eaton, David R. Breininger
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